Ultimate Camping Guide » camping gear

Vegan cooking challenge–using new world ingredients ONLY?

admin — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 19:56:08 +0000

A challenge for you:

Create a vegan dish which only uses as its ingredients plants which are native to South, Central and North America, including the West Indies. Please be creative. Don’t just copy from recipe books or websites. You’ve got plenty of scope – it can be an entrée, a salad, a soup, a main, a side or a dessert… or even a smoothie or a snack – it’s up to you.

There are a few ingredients, such as potatoes and tomatoes, which already have whole cookbooks devoted to them – so it you’re going to include them, try to make them just minor ingredients.

Plants native to the Americas include:

Grains: amaranth, quinoa, maize (corn), teosinte, wild rice.
Sweeteners: agave nectar, corn syrup, maple syrup, sweetleaf (stevia), carnauba.
Spices and flavourings: chilli, paprika, cayenne, allspice (pimenta), vanilla, cacao (cocoa), achiote (annatto), angostura, bergamot, sassafras, sarsaparilla, yerba maté, coca leaf (j/k).
Fruit: avocado, babaco, acerola cherry, tamarillo (tree tomato), feijoa, açaí, tomato, capsicum (bell pepper), blueberry, cranberry, barberry, hackberry, service-berry, thimbleberry, wineberry, prickly pear (nopales), guava, sapodilla, monstera, mamey sapote, white sapote (casimiroa), black sapote (black persimmon), American persimmon, canistel (eggfruit), abiu, soursop (guanabana), custard-apple (cherimoya), sweetsop (sugar-apple), pawpaw, papaya, cape gooseberry, tomate verde, tomatillo, chokecherry, capulin, coco-plum, granadilla, imbu, inga, jaboticaba, kamachile, mamoncillo, naranjilla, passionfruit, pepino, pineapple, choko (chayote).
Nuts and seeds: pecan, hickory nut, Brazil nut, black walnut, pine nut, cashew, sunflower seed, monkey puzzle nut (piñones), peanut, sapucaia nut, pumpkin seed.
Roots and tubers: potato, sweet potato (kumara, apichu), oca, maca, melloco (chiqua, ulloco, timbo), aracacha, cassava (tapioca), crinkleroot, Jerusalem artichoke, jicama (yam bean), Peruvian capucine (nasturtium), yampi, yautia (coco-yam), yacón.
Various others: squash, pumpkin, buffalo gourd, green beans, kidney beans, runner beans, pokeweed (polk salad), arrowroot, camash, mastuerzo, nasturtium, sargasso-weed, tangle, dulse, Irish moss (carragheen).
Oils: sunflower, avocado.
You can also use salt, of course.

Just reading through that list (which is far from complete – there are many lesser-known plants I left out to save time and space), imagine what it would have been like to live in the Old World before Columbus’ first voyage in 1492. No potatoes, tomatoes, chillies, peanuts, avocados, vanilla, chocolate (not that I eat that anyway), pineapples, etc. Italian cuisine would have been weird without the tomato, and the Irish without the potato, Moroccan and Thai without the chilli…

So, what can you come up with? 10 points for the recipe (or recipes, if you want to try more than one) that really grabs my attention with originality or inventiveness or a really delicious sounding combination – bearing in mind that I don’t eat cocoa/chocolate .

Do public campgrounds usually have storage lockers for your gear?

admin — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 04:49:09 +0000

Haven’t gone camping in ages, but I plan on doing a lot of it on a motorcycle trip I’ve got coming up. I know that campsites often have food lockers for bears, etc. but what about your gear? My bike doesn’t have any locking compartments, so if I wanted to go out for some hiking or fishing, I’d hate to have to lug around all my stuff everywhere I go. It’d be nice if I could leave it behind with my tent and bike.
I think I’ve been in NYC too long… I start to forget that there are plenty of places where you can actually trust people. I apply that NY perspective

But even still, maybe I’ll leave my laptop at home. It’s a relative cheapie – paid only $500 for it – but wouldn’t want to lose it nonetheless.

Hey i have a garden corn and peppers, squash , ect.?

admin — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 19:56:10 +0000

Well what im wondering is what is better weeds prevention , the black plastic weed cover , hay , pine straw , or burlap ?

Where should I go for a 2 week solo camping trip in New England?

admin — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 16:47:58 +0000

Im planning a 2 week camping trip this summer. I have done this before in my hometown (northeast kingdom vt) but now i live the seacoast region of NH. Im thinking white mountains or southern maine… I am going to be going solo, so it would be nice to be in an area with cellphone reception just in case. i might have someone come after about a week to resupply me with food and water, so it has to be in reach of a road.

I am willing to hike with my gear, i want to be far enough away from people so that i won’t see anyone while i am out (that includes hearing highway traffic. I also will not be bringing any firearms, so i won’t be able to shoot any animals (for food or protection). I welcome any suggestions for regions or specific areas.

What are the benefits of a GPS while camping?

admin — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 04:48:03 +0000

I have never used a GPS device when I go camping. I have only navigated with a map and compass but I think a GPS might be fun to have. In the woods it seems one of these devices would be handy to fine tune my bearings when I can’t see any noteworthy landmarks. Do they even work under a forest canopy? Are they worth their weight? I will always carry a good topo map and compass I just want to know if a GPS device would be a good piece of gear to add to my kit.

Anyone used the colour autumn orange 2156-10 from Benjamin Moore?

admin — Sun, 11 Dec 2011 19:57:16 +0000

Looking to paint my laundry room orange.
I have white appliances,Lower cabinets painted black upper cabinets painted white and not sure if I am going to use pine countertop stain med dark or get laminate.

I am not afraid of colour but just wondering if anyone has used this one.

My room is 18′ by 4′

What is the most wind resistant tent you can get for beach camping?

admin — Sun, 11 Dec 2011 16:48:00 +0000

My wife and I are camping on the beach at Galveston Island State Park this spring/summer. We currently have a Coleman dome tent, but it tends to really bend and flex in the wind. We’re looking for something a little more sturdy. We usually keep most of our gear and stuff outside the tent under a gazebo shelter, so storage, gear lofts, vestibules, etc. are not that big of an issue. We want to make this a longer stay than normal. A more sturdy tent that doesn’t cave in and use up all the interior space will make all the difference.

We’d like plenty of room if possible. My wife and I are both….uh….”full figured” so the person capacity needs to be a bit “negotiable.”.

Next month I’m going hiking/camping with a friend I’ve known almost 8 months – Should we tent share?

admin — Sun, 11 Dec 2011 04:47:59 +0000

We’re both single (her more recently within the last couple months) and we’re going to be talking next week about what gear we want to take with us to make sure we have everything we need and not take more than we have to. I was debating if I should suggest we tent share – with other friends I’ve gone camping with the subject has always been broached by them. I feel it could just sound wrong coming from a guy asking a girl if we should tent share and give a bad/misrepresented impression of what is on my mind.

We’re totally platonic before anyone suggests otherwise and even if hell froze over, she’d still be out of my league so from day one I’ve never imagined any other possible level of friendship.

Whats good to sell on Craigslist?

admin — Sat, 10 Dec 2011 19:56:17 +0000

Im trying to sell stuff on it but dont know what to sell. I have a black hat im trying to sell right now for 2 day but one one bought it but i didnt figure they would. anyway whats something good people would actually buy? around Christmas i was thinking about trying to sell mistletoe and pine cones because some one told me you could. What do you think?

Cheaters on Yahoo Answers Camping?

admin — Sat, 10 Dec 2011 16:47:46 +0000

I’m not vain enough to think my answers are always the best. One of the benefits of a community forum like Answers is you often get a wide variety of opinions, many good, some not so much. An honest system of voting should help new and inexperienced campers distinguish good answers from the bad. But it also helps experienced people — at least those with an open mind — discover different and potentially better gear or methods. Voting should be on the merit of the answer and not a popularity contest or some ridiculous quest for meaningless and undeserved points or status.

It is awfully suspicious when mediocre (or worse) answers to mundane questions suddenly start getting 5 or 8 votes. It’s also suspicious that, as a result, the number of votes per question has more than doubled, while the amount of interest and questions in Camping seems to have remained constant.

What do you think? Am I seeing things that aren’t there?
@bocitas3, it matters only to the extent that the Asker (and anyone that visits the topic in the future) gets good advice. I could care less about the points, I’m just happy if I can help.

I agree that Askers should be required to come back and choose a best answer. There could still be a community vote for those situations when the Asker either doesn’t know which is best, or is looking for the community’s opinion, but ultimately the Asker should either decide to go with the consensus or not. Yahoo could make this happen by sending reminders via email to the Asker and preventing the Asker from posting new questions until the resolve all expired questions. This is how it works on other similar sites.

So far there’s been some good responses. I’ll give this another day and then choose a best answer.